New Browns head coach Mike Pettine already had a chip on his shoulder.

It could be the size of an asteroid by September. By then, he will have been told a million times that first-time head coaches don't win in Cleveland.

Some times they don't even keep their jobs.

"I coached early on with that chip," Pettine said shortly after agreeing to a Browns contract running through the 2018 season. "I thought people saw me as a high school coach. That drove me."

He was a high school head coach near Philadelphia from 1995-2001. In 2002, at age 35, he talked his way into a support job with the Baltimore Ravens.

Landing an NFL head coaching job in 2014 blows one chip half past Pittsburgh. A new chip grows.

Pettine, 47, wasn't the Browns' first choice.

"To me that is not an issue," he said. "Much has been made of the number of candidates interviewed (owner Jimmy Haslam said he met personally with 10).

"It's been my life-long dream to be an NFL head coach. How ever that opportunity presented itself was fine with me."

His five-year contract must be viewed in Dawg years. The Browns are the team (albeit in transition to Baltimore at the time) that fired Bill Belichick. No expansion-era head coach has survived longer than Romeo Crennel's four seasons. The last three worked a combined five years. The last one, Rob Chudzinski, didn't make it a year.

"That did not factor in for me at all," Pettine said. "Sometimes it's the cockiness of a coach but ... I bet on myself.

"I'm not going to back away for fear of security."

Pettine coached with the Ravens for seven years, going to the playoffs with first-year head coach John Harbaugh in 2008. The next two years, as Rex Ryan's defensive coordinator with the Jets, he coached in AFC championship games, reaching one of them by knocking off Belichick's Patriots.

Pettine isn't proud of his 2013 team's record — the Bills were 6-10 with him as defensive coordinator. That's an improvement over the last six Browns seasons (4-12, 5-11, 5-11, 4-12, 5-11, 4-12 this past season).

Such unwavering failure will get a management group an unflattering nickname. As Pettine was introduced at a hurry-up meeting Thursday, CEO Joe Banner tried to make light of a "Three Stooges" moniker.

Page 2 of 2 - Alluding to Pettine's bald head and beer gut, he suggested the Browns have found their Curly.

Pettine didn't acknowledge the joke. Perhaps he will use it as chip fertilizer.

As far as the joke went, Banner tabbed general manager Mike Lombardi and himself as "our Mo and Larry."

When the "Three Stooges" theme began at the Dec. 30 press conference to announce Chudzinski's ouster, no one tied specific stooges to Browns chieftains.

It was clear, though, that the comedy repulsed Haslam. Perhaps it was smart business for Banner to distance the owner from the punch line.

Whether or not it was a sign Pettine knows who is buttering his bread, the new coach singled out the owner as a big reason he is fired up about working for the Browns. Pettine said he liked the energy coming out of interviews, "especially from Mr. Haslam."

"Mike brings exactly what we think we need," Haslam said, using the words smart, tough, blue-collar and demanding. "He will be a perfect fit for a team and for our fans."

Pettine came across as more forceful and commanding than any of the Browns' head coaches since Butch Davis. Having grown up in Pennsylvania and coached in the AFC North, he is more in tune with this region than Davis, who was ingrained in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas prior to his arrival in 2001.

Davis was a politician. Pettine seems more direct. He said he won't be as direct as his ex-boss and best coaching buddy, Ryan.

"I'm not going to be predicting we'll win Super Bowls," he said.

Yet, Pettine's aura is that of a defiant man as driven to win championships as he was to be a big cheese.

A Pettine credo: "Don't look for a better job. Do a better job."

He seems to understand that Browns fans are starving for something watchable.

"This team," he said, "is going to be built on toughness. You have to be willing to bloody your nose."

He said he aims to wipe out the culture of "same old Browns." He also said he couldn't wait to get out of his dress suit and go work on football.

"Nothing I can say or do today — or for that matter up to September — will matter," he said.